Well I made a pie yesterday that used a similar method to the one Jim suggests in the book and the reality is that it was far more Di Fara than Forcella and validated a lot of what Scott has pointed out. It was delicious but it was not like a WFO Neapolitan. The main reason for the difference was that my total time was around 6 minutes as I have an underpowered, underperforming gas drawer broiler oven (bottom of the line, not top) -- nothing like the Jenn-Air pro series that Jim apparently uses. For me to get closer to a WFO Neapolitan I have to (would have to) take a different approach and probably use a slightly enriched dough.

I used the same formulation for the Lahey’s dough I used the last time, but just changed the flour to KAAP to see what would happen. The dough was mixed last evening. I sure don’t know what happened, but the dough wasn’t sticky like before. I have no explanation why the dough wasn’t sticky except the plastic bag I had the KAAP stored in the ziplock closure has broken and the flour was exposed to ambient room humidity. I really don‘t think that is why the dough wasn‘t really sticky though. It has been fermenting at room temperature of about 70 degrees F overnight.

Bobino414 (Bob) told me last evening that Jim Lahey was a guest on the Martha Stewart (Hallmark channel) yesterday making his no-knead dough with Martha Stewart. Bob said he couldn’t find the link for the show, but I found it if anyone is interested. http://www.marthastewart.com/898669/spring-pizzas Bob told me I could post the link if I wanted.

Thanks Bob, for telling me that Jim Lahey made his dough and baked his pizzas on the Martha Stewart show.

Jim Lahey’s no knead pizza did turn out okay, but there really wasn’t much of any flavor in the crust like I thought there should be. I don't understand why that is. I still don’t have any idea of why the dough didn’t feel the hydration that is was. The dough was balled and left at room temperature for about 2 hrs. before trying to open it. The pizza was made after about 18 hrs. total time at room temperature fermentation. The bottom crust did brown better than in my home oven and there was some oven spring, but I wouldn’t say this pizza had better flavors in the crust than other pies I have made.

i tried another batch of dough today.it the dough is very hard to work with.the wetness makes it necessary to use a lot of flour to keep it from sticking to the peel. you have to work fast. i enclosed my 18 hour bulk rise picture it looks like a poolish . after it is removed from the bowl cutting onto 4 pieces i let it sit 2o minutes before stretching. to get a fast bake i had the pizza 6 inches from the broiler element.the only decent pizza was when i covered the cheese with sauce. with cheese on top the broiler melted it way to quick.i could not get a good bottom bake at all. i heated the stone for one hour it needed more time. my highest stone temperature was 600 degrees. the method in the book was to open the door a few inches to get the broiler on then throw the pie in and close the door. my bake time was about 10 minutes. i had to open the door after a few minutes to get the broiler running again.i might give this one more try with a long oven heat.this is not a simple method for pizza making.

I'm interested to hear from those of you who have used electric ovens to make their NK Pizzas. I've used three different ovens ranging from low-end to quite good and they all are very sketchy in their ability to maintain a constant broiler-on. More often than not they just turn off having reached their maximum setting long before they should have and the pizza suffers accordingly. Sometimes they'll go back on with much opening and closing of the doors etc. but that's bogus and a waste of my time. At best this is a one pizza gimmick as multiple pizzas for the family would make this a very long process.

Can I assume that gas ovens are much more consistent in keeping the broiler on?

scott123

Can I assume that gas ovens are much more consistent in keeping the broiler on?

No, gas ovens have thermostats that the broiler is usually tied into as well. When the oven hits the dial temp, both the bottom burner and the broiler will shut off. Usually.

From what I've seen, best case scenario, 1 in 20 people have broilers that stay on. This book is great for those folks, but not so good for the other 95%.

I don't know. I have to give credit to Jim for even trying to come up with a technique for faster baking (unlike Reinhart), but, at the end of the day, you can't publish a technique that only works for 1 in 25 people and expect everyone to be happy.

Thanks for the info Scott. Agreed on the 1 in 20 from what I've seen and it's a shame. The NK Bread was more or less idiot proof while this is too gimmicky and smacks of a concept that the publishers wanted to throw together to capitalize on the bread theme and Mr. Lahey couldn't resist. (I have a lot of respect for Jim Lahey and have known of him long before No Knead ever came into popular culture but this all seems a bit too close to cashing a cheque while others have done a mediocre job of fleshing out your concept)

Using a high end home oven as the primary basis for testing was also poorly thought out as probably 90% of the people buying this book will not have one.

So, in the interest of a balanced perspective - I taught my class and although the trials of the dual ovens at my disposal prior to the class were not at all encouraging, the actual class went off without a hitch. I decided to use only one of the two ovens with the broiler technique as the lower oven would have had me on my knees half the night checking to see if the broiler was on .Instead, I set up the lower oven with a double set of stones (over/under) and a max temp of 550 F. That way I had a fallback position if the broiler didn't work.The broiler was flawless for the whole class and the pizzas looked great. The bottom oven served as a good lesson in what the same dough looked like cooked in 9 - 10 minutes vs 2 minutes and was very enlightening for my students.

So, there you go when the technique works it is not bad at all.

On a side note I found it very interesting that Mark Bittman's NYT column last week on pizza made at home did not at all reference Lahey's new book (considering the history they have together).

I was mildly appalled at Mark Bittman's pizza recipe given on the NYT website. He didn't even measure the ingredients with a measuring cup! I know part of his thing is to make things look not so hard, but this is going a bit far in my opinion. Also he used a rolling pin to roll out what was essentially a New York style pizza. The pizza that came out looked pretty awful. Probably it didn't taste bad, but it would not have been very much harder for him to have given a decent tutorial in how to make good pizza. Ah well, I guess people will just have to find their way here.

As far as the Lahey technique with using the broiler, it worked great for me. I have a pretty good electric oven (Electrolux) and for whatever reason the broiler seems to stay on for the entire time the pizza is in the oven. The pizza is delicious. The only problem is the smoke created by this technique. If you are just 30 seconds late, goodbye pizza. It's toast.